Columbia has quite some beautiful buildings. I got inspired by them and felt it quite applies to software as well.

When I look at those buildings, I know instantly that there are a lot of complexity there. But I feel very comfortable looking at the whole. Just a glimpse, I know what is going on there. I feel very comfortable to look at the whole and then look at each part to appreciate the beauty and how the complexity is put together. The whole building gives me a very consistent feeling.

I feel software should be like this. Even though there is a lot of complexity, software should be made to allow the complexity to be comfortable accommodated, just like looking at the beautiful buildings.

Most modern buildings, however, you know there is not much complexity there with just a glimpse.

Of course, there are a lot of simpler construct in Columbia that are simple, concise and beautiful. For example, the street lamps, the benches. Everything flows naturally on these simple things. When they don’t have to have a lot of complexity, they stay simple and beautiful.

This applies to the viewing of web interface for webapps. It also applies to the viewing of source code. With the source code, we often rely on IDE to show the structure of the code beautifully. Sometimes we also rely on some simple figures to show the overall construct of the code.

Of course, in software, all these tied into the object oriented programming.

Not just software, I feel human organizations should also be like this. It is all about space.